


4 Times Dairine's Wizardly Visitors Slid by Her College Roommate and One Time They Didn't

by tptigger



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: 4 + 1, Dairine was kind of relieved, Games Wizards Play spoilers, Gen, Roommates, because I couldn't find a fifth character that worked, college adjustments, except when the powers are sneaky, sevarfrith planets are hard sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8813131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tptigger/pseuds/tptigger
Summary: Dairine has lots of visitors, mainly for consults, but somehow, despite the fact that many of them just drop by, her roommate doesn't notice anything amiss.





	1. 1- Nita

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Geekhyena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geekhyena/gifts).



> Many thanks to AtypicalOwl for beta reading this!

When Dairine left for college, Dairine and Kit had a bet on how long it would take for Nita to "just drop in" to check on her.

Kit had said two weeks. Dairine had said a month. They were both over.

Dairine was wishing she'd decided to pursue solar controls full-time and skip college. She had a stack of reading a mile high (turns out they assign reading for the first day before you even get the syllabus), two papers due in ten days, and the food was the worst thing she'd ever tasted -- including rations on Tevaral and that time the Crossings had given her Sker’ret's order by mistake and she hadn't realized it until she tasted it (Fortunately it wasn't poisonous).

What Dairine needed was a Netflix binge and a giant pile of chocolate. Preferably a pile of Carmela and Ronan's salted caramel dark chocolate special selection bars. She could have them for dinner and then head out to the _a cappella_ concert or something.

Or sit in her room and watch Netflix and eat more chocolate. Either sounded like a viable option.

It was 2 pm. Dairine figured she could watch an episode of something, spend an hour doing her reading, watch a second episode, have dinner, and then binge the rest of the night. It sounded like a good plan, so she headed back to her dorm room. Hopefully, Claudia, her roommate, wouldn't decide that this was a good day to skip class.

Dairine climbed the hill that led to her dorm and saw a woman who looked a lot like Nita sitting on the bench that was there for the more out of shape students to rest after they climbed the hill.

That had been happening a lot. Dairine would get a glimpse of a dark haired woman and think "Nita," or see a black man from a distance, so she couldn't see how tall he was and think it was Darryl. For example, as she finished climbing the hill to the woman on the bench she would see that this woman wasn't...

"Dairi!"

Wait. That _was_ Nita.

Dairine quickened her pace, but resisted the urge to tackle Nita in a hug. "Hey, Nita, what's going on?"

"Netflix dropped the newest Marvel show, and I know you probably don't have a lot of time, but I thought we could watch the first episode or two together?"

Dairine smiled. "Hey, perfect, I was looking to watch something this afternoon. Claud has class, shouldn't be a problem."

Nita stood, stretching her arms above her head and then offering one to Dairine. "Shall we, my lady."

Dairine suspected Nita had been studying too hard for her medieval history class. "We shall." She linked her arm with Nita and led her up to the dorm room.

***

Dairine buried her head in Nita's shoulder. "Gross. I get that Netflix has no standards and practices, but do they have to show so much blood? I kind of spend every episode wanting to call Matt for back up."

"No, you really don't," Nita said. "Kit and I watched with Matt and his boyfriend once, he was nitpicking every little scene and saying how the hero shouldn't have been able to do that after getting hit that hard."

"Well, that sounds legit."

"He was talking about Luke Cage."

"Oh," Dairine said. "That's a little different then."

There was a key in the lock.

"Uh oh," Dairine said.

Claudia walked in, and scrunched her face in confusion. "Hi, Dairine who's..."

"You remember Nita right?" Dairine asked, untucking her legs from under her.

"Yes, your big sister, right?" Claudia closed the door behind her. "Long way from Penn, aren't you?"

Nita shrugged. "Well, I had a layover here on the way up to NYU to visit Kit. I could spend it twiddling my thumbs at the train station or binging Netflix with Dairine."

"Oh, that makes sense." Claudia dumped her backpack on top of her bed and went digging around in a drawer. "I'm just going to change into my work out clothes and hit the rec center."

"Oh, don't leave on my account," Nita said.

"I was planning on going anyway," Claudia pulled off her jeans, letting her shirt hang over her underwear as she pulled on a pair of yoga pants. "There's this great yoga instructor at the rec center on Friday afternoons."

Claudia turned around and switched her loose sweatshirt for a form fitting top.

"What she means is there's a cute yoga teacher that she has a crush on and Claudia wants to impress him with her perfect pigeon pose," Dairine teased.

"Same difference," Claudia pulled on a pair of slip on shoes, grabbed a rolled up yoga matt out of her closet. "Catch you later."

After the door closed behind her roommate, Dairine breathed a sigh of relief. "How..."

"Kit and I time arrivals to coincide with trains. It'll look like I took a later train up to New York, but it'll track."

Dairine stared. "Sometimes, Nita, I'm just glad you're on our side."

* * *


	2. 2- Mehrnaz

The second time someone dropped in, it was at least expected. Mehrnaz needed a consult (and an excuse to get away from her aunt for a bit), and had messaged Dairine in advance.

Taking a leaf out of Nita's book, they timed Mehrnaz's arrival for a train, and Dairine told Claudia that she was having a friend come to visit.

She had left out the details, other to say that Mehrnaz was a friend she knew from online who was in the states on a foreign exchange program. In reality, she was gating in from Mumbai to chat with Dairine about wizardry software -- Mehrnaz was working on finding a way to link her improved earthquake spell to more mundane forms of earthquake detection. Eventually her goal was for the two to be linked such that if an earthquake was detected it would automatically trigger.

Dairine meant to get there early in order to chat with the local gating wizards, but her professor had no concept of "end of class," or how much material that she could cover in a single lecture, so they were routinely fifteen minutes late. According to the upperclassman on Dairine's dorm floor, the department had given up and just taken to not scheduling a class in the room immediately following any of her classes. She should have known better, fortunately, she had at least helped Mehrnaz choose an arrival time that meant Dairine would be able to meet her at the station even when class went over.

Dairine walked around a corner, through a "don't notice me" spell and into the gating area. A black and white tuxedo cat stretched and looked at her.

"Dai stihó, Cousin, you must be Mathau. I'm Dairine Callahan. We've previously communicated through the Whispering."

"Dai, Dairine. It is nice to meet you. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to visit, I like to meet all the wizards on the campus, but when the gate isn't acting up some of the closer to latency wizards are needing advice on their ordeals."

"I meant to come introduce myself but schoolwork and trying to get my bearings. It's nice to meet you."

Mathau stretched lazily.

Mehrnaz stepped out of the gate and looked around, taking in her surroundings. "Dai stiho, Cousins," she said brightly.

"Dai, Mehrnaz," Dairine said. "This is Mathau, the local gate expert."

"Dai, Cousin," Mathau said. "Welcome to Princeton."

"Thank you," Mehrnaz said. "I'm looking forward to seeing the campus."

"Come on," Dairine said. "You can tell me how things are going at home on the way, and my roommate should be at class by the time we're done with the campus tour, so we can talk Errantry then."

"Sounds like a plan," Mehrnaz said.

Dairine offered Mehrnaz her arm. Mehrnaz took it, and together, just as the rush of people from the arrival of a train entered the hallway, they left the gate area.

* * *

"Shall I cast the diagram?" Mehrnaz offered as soon as the door was closed behind them.

Dairine placed her backpack on the bed.

Spot climbed out of it. "How else are we going to see if it can talk to normal computers? I won't be able to interact with it in your book."

Mehrnaz looked at Dairine.

"Don't look at me," Dairine said. "I know full well you're secretly here to consult with my manual. If you weren't so focused on Terran technology, I'd have invited the mobiles too."

Mehrnaz's eyes grew so wide that Dairine suspected she was going to have to introduce them at some point anyway. "I..."

"It's OK, Mehrnaz. Just cast it on the floor and we can all have a look," Dairine said.

Mehrnaz cast the spell from her manual onto the floor. 

Spot poked it. "Hello."

"Very funny, Spot," Dairine said at the same time that Mehrnaz giggled.

"At least someone appreciates my sense of humor," Spot replied. He poked it with a leg, then started reading it intently.

They spent a good hour like that, with Spot poking it, Mehrnaz adjusting the spell, and Dairine throwing in the occasional suggestion.

"It just told me that it senses something amiss in perfect binary," Spot said.

"See, I told you that you were here to consult with Spot," Dairine joked.

"I'm here to consult with you both," Mehrnaz replied. "You helped too! I really value your opinion, but I'd be remiss if I passed up an opportunity to ask a sentient wizardry-run machine for advice on how to talk to regular computers, and most people with technology specialties aren't as familiar with this spell, or affecting unstoppable forces of nature."

"We really should have asked Roshaun," Dairine said.

Mehrnaz giggled.

"What?" Dairine pulled the pillow off of her bunk and whacked her with it. "None of that, this is serious business. He's better at star manipulation than I am."

"By which you mean you've not been at it as long, and you miss your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Su-re he's not," Mehrnaz said.

"Do not say that in front of him when you get the chance, you will get a long lecture about the woeful inadequacies of the term, and the superiority of the Wellakh language or even the Speech on the matter."

Mehrnaz blinked at her.

"We are a couple. He is not a boy, I am not a girl."

"I see," Mehrnaz said.

A key turned in the lock.

Mehrnaz grabbed her open diary manual and yanked the spell diagram back into it. "So how are things going with Roshaun with you in school now?"

"Wait," Claudia said. "Who's Roshaun? Dairine, do you have a hometown honey that you haven't told anyone about?"

"A what?" Mehrnaz asked.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Where are my manners. I'm Claudia, Dairine's roommate."

"Mehrnaz, Dairine's online friend." She held out her hand to shake.

Claudia did.

"Ok, so give me the scoop on Roshaun and why Dairine hasn't said anything to me!"

Mehrnaz threw Dairine a helpless look.

"Someone I met when my family hosted foreign exchange students," Dairine said, thinking quickly. "We have a... complicated relationship."

"Wait, so are you a couple or is it complicated?" Mehrnaz asked.

Dairine sighed. Mehrnaz was spending the night, and she and Claudia were taking her to a performance of Guys and Dolls on campus first. It was going to be a long night.

* * *


	3. 3- Roshaun

It was a quiet Saturday afternoon. Dairine wanted to be outside, but she had a geology lab report, an English paper, and a large pile of reading for all her classes. Spot was one of the few laptops in the world whose screen was visible in direct sunlight, but trying to write when everyone was asking how she could do that was very distracting, so she didn't like to take advantage of that particular feature of his.

And also probably not the best of ideas on a sevarfrith world. So she was instead lounging on her bunk, glaring at her laptop screen, trying to find something for the discussion of the Geology lab report that didn't amount to "We screwed up the directions and then the rock was mad at us so our results are funny." Especially without the wizardry bits. Or the screwing up of the directions.

Claudia was sprawled on the top bunk, taking notes on her political science text.

Dairine should have known it was too peaceful to last.

There was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Dairine called out.

"It's Roshaun."

Dairine almost knocked Spot off of her lap and onto the floor.

"Ooh, am I about to be sexiled?" Claudia teased.

Dairine rolled her eyes. "Grow up." She opened the door. Roshaun, thankfully, had remembered that Dairine's dorm room was not the open atmosphere of her house, but rather the hardcore sevarfrith domain of undercover wizardry, and was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

"Greetings, Dairine."

"Come in, Roshaun."

"What is this sexiled thing that..." He trailed off. Probably seeing the blush that Dairine could feel burning her cheeks.

"This is Claudia, my roommate," Dairine said. "Claudia, this is Roshaun."

"The famous 'it's complicated' Roshaun who doesn't want to be your boyfriend Roshaun?" Claudia asked.

"It's a wholly inaccurate term," Roshaun said. "I prefer... other terms that folks don't understand."

"What, like another language or something?"

Roshaun fidgeted. "Or something."

"You're an idiot," Claudia declared.

"Well I never..."

"Let's go for a walk," Dairine said, and bundled Roshaun out of the room before he could say something he would regret.

* * *


	4. 4- Darryl

Dairine and Claudia bumped into each other in the quad and headed back to the room from class.

"I still don't understand why Professor Arturo can't be bothered to end on time," Dairine said. "Or at least start to learn what takes an hour of class time! He kept us an extra half hour today! By the time I checked my mail and ran an errand I was dodging everyone coming out of the next class."

"At least you don't have class right afterwards," Claudia said. "This one poor guy in my Civil War history class keeps walking in twenty minutes late. I'm amazed no one made him drop it or something. That's ridiculous! He's always asking people for notes; I probably shouldn't lend them to him, but I just feel so sorry for him, you know?"

"Is this Blake?" Dairine tapped her proximity card to the reader outside of the dorm exterior doors. "I took notes on the end of class last week because he had an exam in your class. I hope he did OK! It must be absolutely hellacious." 

"Tell me about it!" Claudia said. "Did you ask him why he hasn't dropped?"

"He can't, he needs both classes to get into something next semester in order to graduate on time."

"That is beyond unreal." Claudia started climbing the steps.

They reached their floor, and Peter Romanoff stuck his head out of the room. "Hey, Claud, have you got a second? This Calculus problem is kicking my ass."

Claudia winked at Dairine. "Sure, I can give you a whole minute even."

"Thanks!" Peter said. 

Dairine continued down the hallway, put her key in the lock and opened the door.

A dark shape was sprawled on her bed, paging through a WizPod that had been unfolded to the size of an iPad.

"Darryl!" Dairine said. "What are you doing here? _How the hell are we going to explain this to my roommate, she would have seen you in the hallway?_ You just can't go co-locating into other people's homes when they're not out to everyone."

"You haven't told your roommate you're a wizard?" Darryl's eyes grew to the size of mobiles.

"No," Dairine said. "This floor is chock full of terrible gossips, it would get around school in no time."

"Uh..." Darryl said.

"Oh, hello," Claudia said. "You didn't say you were having a friend over. Are you old enough to be wandering around campus by yourself?"

"I uh..."

"How'd you get in here without calling in anyway?"

"I hacked the proximity cards and picked the lock," Darryl blurted.

Dairine tried not to wince -- and made a mental note to explain to Darryl that "someone let me in" made much more sense than "I hacked the proximity cards." To the point where random people in the dorms were almost a given.

Claudia dumped her backpack on her desk. "Dairine, please give me a heads up if your hacker friends are going to be showing up in future and breaking into our room. I'm going to be helping Peter with his calculus homework. Don't wait up." She stalked out and closed the door behind her.

"Um..." Darryl looked between the door and Dairine. "I think I messed something up? I'm sorry."

"If you'd called, I could've helped you figure out something a little more subtle. What's going on?"

"I'm working on the new WizPod software and how to interface it with factory Apple computers and I wanted your and Spot's opinions, so I just sort of co-located without thinking about it. I'll try to plan better next time."

"It happens, and I can't believe Claudia bought that, but we lucked out, so let's not look a gift horse in the mouth," Dairine said. "Now, let's have a look at that spell you wanted help with."

Darryl brought up the spell on his WizPod.

* * *


	5. +1 GIGO

Dairine should have known that her luck wouldn't hold up forever. Mehrnaz and Nita had both been careful. Mehrnaz's visit had, of course, been planned, and Nita was always dropping in on Kit and had a system. Roshaun and Darryl hadn't thought, but Roshaun was good at following Dairine's lead, and Darryl at least lived on Earth and came up with an excuse. Also, they looked human. Perhaps that was why Dairine let her guard down. Maybe she was just excited.

Or maybe it was the strange exhausted high that came from her Calc III midterm going so well. Dairine took the steps to her third floor dorm room two at a time. She unlocked the door to her room, and dumped her backpack on the bed next to a metal lump with two eyestalks poking out of it.

"With."

Dairine registered the mobile on her bed, its round body slightly tarnished and its eyestalks tilted towards her curiously.

"GIGO!" She scooped her little friend into a hug. "What brings you all the way here?"

"What, I need a reason to come see how my mom is doing?"

"Well, given the energy output involved, you usually have one."

GIGO's eyestalks made a complete circle, a mobile version of an eye roll.

"How's the archiving going?" Dairine asked conversationally. She set him down on the bed. Spot emerged from her backpack, having been in stealth mode in case Dairine's roommate was at home. He and GIGO started talking faster than Dairine could perceive.

There were times she hated not being able to speak quick-life.

The closed door swung open and Claudia walked through. "Hey, Dairine how did your..." she trailed off as she saw Spot and GIGO communing on the bed.

"Oh *shit*. I thought I got away from all this. What's next? Talking the TV into getting alien channels? Ferb the Fern insisting on being relocated because he says the window's too cold?"

Dairine blinked. "You know about wizardry?"

"My baby sister is an upstart wizard and she makes Fred and George Weasley seem like Percy. It's all over the place. This was supposed to be a new start. This was supposed to be *normal*."

Dairine blinked, wondering how, if Claud knew about wizardry, she hadn't seen right through all her lame excuses. Maybe it was that non-wizards tended to deny what was right in front of them. Maybe it was serious cognitive dissonance. Maybe Claud had just _wanted_ to.

"I'm sorry?" Dairine said.

"My sister would say this wasn't an accident. Just... please no aliens in the room at all hours begging you for consults."

"I thought you liked Roshaun?"

Claudia's jaw dropped. "Wait, ‘it's complicated Roshaun?’ Who just waltzed in here... Wait, no, he knocked and was dressed like a human."

"Don't worry, he's figured out time zones too," Dairine said. "He won't show up at three in the morning unannounced. And if it's an emergency, I'll meet him elsewhere."

"Thank goodness for that!" Claudia paused. "Wait, is Nita a wizard too?"

"Yes, and Mehrnaz and Darryl."

Claudia just stared. "So he didn't hack the proximity cards?"

"Darryl is a longer story that I don't think you want to hear. If you like, I won't tell them you're in the know."

Claudia sighed. "I appreciate the offer, but just... unless you need an alibi with the RAs for errantry, please just leave me out of it?"

"Absolutely."

"Thank you."

Claudia took a step towards the bunk beds. "Oh, gee. Where are my manners? Who are your friends?"

The End


End file.
